After spending over 50 years on and around the water, I have realized that without strong fisheries laws and effective conservation measures, the future of salt water fishing, and America's living marine resources, is dim. Yet conservation is given short shrift by national angling organizations and the angling press. I hope that this blog will incite, inform and inspire salt water fishermen to reclaim their traditional role as the leading advocates for the conservation of America's fisheries.

It governs fish caught by everyone, whether they’re casual
weekend anglers, veteran charter boat crews or those who chose to make a career
of commercial fishing. Whether fishermen
seek marlin, haddock or mackerel, for sale, for food or to just let them go,
the Magnuson-Stevens Act governs their actions.

Thus, it is only natural that any reauthorization of the
Magnuson-Stevens Act should consider the needs of all of the nation, with
respect to both geography and sector.

Sure, there’s input from elsewhere. The New England trawlers are “flexibility”
fans, because they know it means business as usual, the “flexibility” to keep overfishing badly overfished stocks, to make money while the making is good and
then, when the last drop of blood is squeezed from the stone, to move on to
other species and do it again .

“I don’t know why some people want to require a scientific
principle wedded to a non-scientific that every species can be rebuilt in 10
years except that creates a club that’s useful to hold over the industry.”

“We support the ability to adjust a management action that
would avoid economic hardship while still being able to achieve the rebuilding
and recovery of a species. The fish
stock would reach the same desirable level but those in the fishery would not
be devastated economically.

“We support prudent reform that is science based and
considers the impacts of management actions on all fishermen, the fishing
communities and the fish.”

However, not all members of the commercial fishing community
believes that H.R. 1335 represents either prudent, science-based management or
a means to achieve the rebuilding and recovery of fish stocks.

“creates additional flexibility on rebuilding timelines for
depleted fish stocks. So if other
factors are impacting (stocks) such as seals, climate change, it allows loopholes
that don’t require the rebuilding of stocks.
It’s important that we acknowledge
other things that are impacting our fish stocks but we can’t use that as
an excuse to not rebuild. A fisherman
deserves healthy stocks and a profitable fishery and in order to have these we
need to rebuild.”

“If there were a ton of cod around and things looked better I
might feel differently. To loosen that
up and go down that road [of flexibility] is just a disaster. You’re never seeing codfish come back.”

In a way, such commercial support of the law is hardly surprising, as the current
Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization is being driven primarily by a militant
recreational fishing community that is focused on increasing harvests in the
name of greater economic benefits for its members. Thus, like the trawlers trying to kill off
the last Gulf of Maine cod, the radical wing of the angling, fishing tackle and
boatbuilding communities are seeking the “flexibility” to evade science-based
catch limits, to avoid rebuilding stocks and to allow overfishing for
short-term economic gain.

However, unlike the groundfish trawlers up in New England,
the recreational fishing industry isn’t merely trying to increase its own
allocation beyond biologically prudent bounds; it is actively seeking to
encroach on allocations given to the commercial, and in at least one case, the
for-hire sector as well. Thus it is seeking
a change in the law that would require regional fisheries management councils
to reconsider allocations between the commercial and recreational (and
sometimes for-hire) sectors on a regularly scheduled basis.

That, in itself, is not a bad thing, and could even be
beneficial.

Allocations tend to be based
on historical data, which may now be decades old, and biological, environmental and demographic changes since many were made might very well justify a review.

However, here’s where things get a little strange.

In both H.R. 1335 and the Florida
Fisheries Improvement Act, the reallocation mandate is not applied
coastwide.

Instead, mandatory reexamination of allocations would only be required in the South Atlantic and
Gulf of Mexico.

That’s fine, perhaps, if you fish for red snapper or
amberjack, but doesn’t help very much if you’re an angler in the mid-Atlantic who
seeks summer flounder, a New Englander who likes to catch scup or, perhaps most
relevant of all, a recreational fishermen who pursues Pacific
halibut, where allocation issues are pressing and real.

Magnuson-Stevens is a nation-wide law. The “big three” organizations trying to
change it—the American Sportfishing Association, Coastal Conservation
Association and National Marine Manufacturers Association—purport to be national organizations. But the
current efforts to amend Magnuson-Stevens make it pretty clear that if you
don’t live and fish in a handful of southeastern states—or if you fish for a
living instead of for fun—you’re treated like an orphan, and given no consideration at all.

And that’s very wrong, for as noted earlier,
Magnuson-Stevens is a national law, and should be addressing big-picture national
issues, and not petty parochial concerns.

In fact, such national issues are few. Magnuson-Stevens is working well, reducing
overfishing and the number of overfished stocks to the lowest levels ever
recorded. Along most stretches of coast,
there is little clamor for change.

Thus, the militant dissidents in the southeast, who would
rather see landings governed by their appetite for fish rather than science,
and don’t mind overfishing at all—at least, when they’re the ones doing it—have
become a dominant voice in the reauthorization process.

Instead of seeing changes to the law that would provide
forage fish greater protection wherever they swim, or keep ecosystems intact,
we see amendments to change allocations in the southeast, or to extend state
waters out to nine miles, instead of the usual three—but, once again, only in
the Gulf of Mexico.

Driven not by a desire to improve the law, but merely by a
yearning to kill more fish than biology and prudence allow, and covetous of
fish—particularly red snapper—brought to port on any boats but their own, they
have demonstrated themselves willing to sacrifice the health of America’s
fisheries in order to get their own way.

Because they are as bright as they are selfish,
politically sophisticated and very well-heeled, there’s a fair chance that they
will succeed.

And if that happens, we’ll find to our sorrow that the fish
will be the most ill-treated orphans of all.